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Turning Lugers into Winners

Chris Moore, training for the $1 million dollar prize. Photo by Philip Jarmain

Canada’s lugers have been offered a prize of $1,000,000 dollars if they win a gold medal. No, I didn’t accidentally hold the zero button down too long. That’s $1,000,000. For luging. That’s not dangling a carrot. That’s dangling an entire produce section.

The team’s sponsor, Fast Track Group out of Alberta, announced the incentive today. For a while it seemed like an incredibly selfless gesture. Then company founder Darren Weeks spoke and instead ended up sound kind of dickish.

“I guess I’m blessed financially and I wanted to share,” he said in a phone interview from St. Albert.

Then he probably hung up the phone, lit a cigar with a Borden, and went for a swim in his pool full of gold coins.

Other non-luging Canadian athletes have the chance to win $20,000 for a gold medal from the Canadian Olympic Committee (including those cash starved NHL’ers, thank god). Now that Fast track has offered (pinky pressed to lip) “one mill-yon doll-hers”, they’re making the COC cash incentive program look about as generous as a tip my Grandpa would leave at a restaurant.

Wow, so can we expect a win, from the Canadian Luge team now? I mean, up to this point, they’ve chosen to spend every moment of their life training so that they can win a cool necklace and sing in public, right?

Does the million give them a greater incentive than they already have? If we know anything at all, it’s that Olympic athletes want to win because they’re competitors. Endorsements come if you win that cool necklace and you have a great personality.

Offering a million dollars for the win won’t help them, maybe offering a million for the best built luge might. 🙂